Sunday: The 4th Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Galatians 3:23-29
Preacher: Peter C. Lane

"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female." What glorious freedom. What a frighteningly ambiguous teaching. The Apostle Paul's invitation to freedom comes complete with tension. On one side, freedom in Christ calls into question the structures that we use to make life manageable (race, gender, social position). Can we draw the line anywhere? On the other hand Freedom in Christ calls into question our societal definition that freedom is the absence of outside interference. This freedom is all about outside interference. Christian freedom is about new life in Christ. Participating in God whose Triune nature is defined by the bonds of love, through Christ who had his feet washed by a notorious sinner seductively and lovingly, frees us from the constraints of this world. It frees us to love. That is a complicated blessing.

St. Paul wrote these radical words (no Jew or Greek) around the year 53 A.D. to the churches in a part of Asia Minor called Galatia where Paul had stayed during one of his early missionary journeys. The trouble for the churches in Galatia came after Paul left and other missionaries started encouraging them to adopt the Jewish practice of circumcision so that they could be sure that they were included in the Abrahamic covenant. (Remember Genesis 15: Your descendents shall be as numerous as the stars and to them I will give this land.) These later missionaries believed that to be a Christian one had to also follow Jewish law. The earliest Galatian churches had been part of creating a radically new interpretation of the God of Abraham not requiring circumcision and this had exposed those early followers of Jesus to harsh winds of criticism. After this chaotic freedom in the Spirit of Love, the message of circumcision must have sounded like a secure harbor for these new Christians to set anchor. Learning about the confusion over circumcision years later, Paul writes to remind the Galatians of their early days when they were confident that their love had a guide-the Spirit of Christ-and they didn't need the law. He is not a gentle teacher. "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ..." "You foolish Galatians." Paul makes it abundantly clear that circumcision is not required. This is some radical stuff. Paul is staking his claiming that the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Love, is the arbiter of truth. But how do you control that? You don't. To these people that were absolutely engrossed in the controversy over difference Paul proclaims that in Christ there is not even such a thing as Jew or Greek. Paul has thrown the doors wide open.

That's scary. And that fear is why we need to keep reading Paul's letter to the Galatians. The Church has so often worried that this freedom would lead to abuse that we have continually come up with new forms of circumcision, new laws to be our disciplinarian. The reaction of the Church to that freedom is put exquisitely in Dostoevsky's parable of "The Grand Inquisitor" in The Brothers Karamazov. The older, atheist brother Ivan tells younger and devout brother Alyosha a parable. Jesus returns to earth in Spain during the Inquisition. The day before Jesus shows up, the Cardinal who was the Grand Inquisitor, had presided at the burning of almost a hundred heretics, "ad majorem gloriam Dei." Dostoevsky writes that Jesus "came softly, unobserved, and yet, strange to say, everyone recognized him." People flock to Jesus. Their devotion peaks in a dramatic miracle in front of the Cathedral in Seville. A dead young girl is being brought into the Cathedral in a casket full of flowers. Implored by the girl's mother, Jesus "softly pronounces, ‘Maiden, arise." The Cardinal witnesses this miracle and immediately has his guards arrest Jesus. Later that night the Grand Inquisitor meets Jesus in his dank cell. True to form, Jesus says nothing. The Cardinal says a great deal. He says, "For fifteen centuries we have been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and over for good." The Cardinal explains to Jesus that now people are happy in the freedom they think they have even though "they have brought their freedom to [the church] and laid it humbly at our feet." Then he scolds Jesus for the radical nature of freedom in Christ. "Thou wouldst go into the world, and art going with empty hands, with some promise of freedom which men in their simplicity and their natural unruliness cannot even understand, which they fear and dread-for nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom." The Cardinal makes it clear to Jesus that people are happier in complete submission. Jesus' only response is to silently kiss the almost 90-year-old Cardinal on the lips. Is the Cardinal right? Are we happier in complete submission? Where the missionaries that came after Paul right when they told the new Christians to find safe harbor in the law of circumcision? Does, as the Inquisitor said, the freedom of Christ bring fear and dread? Some fear, some dread, but also life abundant, deep peace, and abiding joy. Paul's message of freedom in Christ-no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female-puts us out in the big winds. Reef your sail, being a Child of God is an exciting journey. Paul says in Galatians, "The only thing that counts is faith working through Love." The silent kiss that Jesus shares with the Inquisitor is the key to the whole passage. Love.

I am not saying that Christian freedom is mere license. While the Church must not fall into the trap of the Grand Inquisitor and extinguish freedom, it must also not fall into a laxity that would separate freedom from that all-important qualifier in Christ? While there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, there is most definitely a God that created us, gave us freedom, and wants to draw us into the love of the Triune God. Living faithfully in that love takes discernment, a discernment that the Grand Inquisitor thought humans incapable. I disagree. As Anglicans we believe that we find that discernment in prayer, in song, and in community at table. There is no way of knowing for sure what is freedom in Christ and what is license. But if we are marinating ourselves in scripture and song, hospitable community and honest conversation, eating bread and drinking wine, then the spirit of Christ will give us discernment. Our love does have a guide.

There is a reason we gather together every Sunday. Living as a child of God, living with the law of Love, is not a skill you learn, it is a habit you cultivate. As the later missionaries to the Galatians preached and as the Grand Inquisitor rightly pointed out, humans find it easier to live with the certainty. But Paul preached freedom, "No Jew or Greek, slave or free..." Let us hoist our sails and get out into the winds of the freedom in Christ. The harbors will beckon. Keep you heading. Fear and dread will fade as we are drawn into the triune love of God.

Sources:
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov [New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976], 227-245.
Adrian Hastings, "Freedom" in The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Thought edited by Adrian Hastings, [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 250-251.